


Rewind

by berryjammy



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Backstory, Deviant Chloes, Deviant Original Chloe | RT600, F/M, Gen, Intersex Chloe, Pegging, Pre-Canon, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-06-30 23:55:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15762354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berryjammy/pseuds/berryjammy
Summary: A look back at Elijah's history and his relationship with the Chloe models, before the RK800 and RK900 prototypes came to live with him.(This is a prequel to the Domestic series, but is a standalone story and does not require having read any of the prior stories.)





	1. Elijah

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel that takes place before the events of my story [Touch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15119240) and most of the game. I wanted to attempt to reconcile the Elijah we see in the game versus the one I write in the Domestic series. I tried really hard to work within the timeline and framework that is presented in-game as canon and expand with my own ideas. Plus he's usually written as just a mysterious shady asshole so I wanted to humanize him a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter focuses solely on Elijah's backstory. It's very tame exposition, rating probably General Audiences or Teen. The explicit stuff only happens in the second chapter for a single scene.

Elijah Kamski founded CyberLife in 2018. Unlike most companies, it did not have what most would consider “humble beginnings.” It was no homegrown garage start-up. If nothing else, Elijah never did things half-assed. Thanks to connections through his mentor Amanda Stern, he was able to schedule meetings with private equity firms to obtain venture capital funding straight out of university. He had to provide proof of concept and show he wasn’t a just a teenage genius with delusions of grandeur. He was young, but also very passionate and obviously intelligent. He was able to secure financing, and CyberLife became a reality. Elijah was 16.

\---

With the proper financial backing, he was finally able to devote his entire being to his dream. Creating machines that could replace menial tasks for humans and make lives easier. There were many long nights and plenty of heartache in finding a project being worked on for weeks resulted in a dead end. Many imperfect prototypes and pure duds. He threw himself into his work. Health and mental well-being were sacrificed to chase his ambitions and prove his genius. Stress and all-nighters and coffee and microwave burritos.

In time, with the creation of Thirium 310 and biocomponents, the internal hardware was finally spot-on. His team had created physically capable machines that could reasonably go through space and operate like a human with none of the drawbacks. Able to complete tasks without ever tiring physically or mentally. But the programming wasn’t there. On the outside, they were not quite right. Their skin was too flawless, faces too symmetrical. They were quiet and still and unnerving to interact with. They blinked either too infrequently or way too often. While their voices were natural-sounding, the phrasing they responded with was like a pre-programmed computer, with none of the warmth or humor of a real human. Test subjects reported being unsettled by them. These machines resided firmly in the uncanny valley.

It took work. Little details that make humans physically imperfect had been previously overlooked and brought back into the design process. Freckles, moles, stubble, pores. Slightly uneven ears. Light eyebrows. Suddenly they were not just “reasonable approximations” anymore, they were almost physically indistinguishable from actual humans. They just needed to overcome the issue of personality.

Further programming helped bridge the gap there. Perfecting a warm, natural smile. Breathing, while unnecessary for survival, added to the realism with an added side benefit of helping cool biocomponents. Adaptive learning helped shape their vocabularies and develop natural-sounding speech patterns. Personality programming helped mold them into objects people actually wanted to interact with, because they had character and individual personality traits.

The culmination of all of this came in 2021. The RT600. Chloe. Elijah was 19.

\---

Chloe was sweet and genuine. She sincerely seemed interested in listening to others. She’d ask questions just for the conversation. She’d respond with a giggle or a smile. She was easy to talk to. Easy to forget she was just a machine. She was more pleasant to be around than most humans, so it was no wonder Elijah quickly came to prefer her company to anyone else’s. She became his personal assistant.

Over her first year of existence, she received numerous firmware updates to perfect her social skills. Elijah would wake in the middle of the night with lightning strikes to his brain and rush to the company's office building—if he hadn’t already been sleeping in his office—to tinker with her programming.

When it was time to perform the Turing test, she had to be taken away from CyberLife headquarters to prevent against any bias. The test itself had transformed from its basic concept posited in 1950 to an actual scientific test. It evolved into a series of in-person interviews and was judged based on a number of criteria. Randomly selected applicants were taken to a neutral location. Variables were introduced, such as groups being told or not told that she was a machine. Some interviews were one-on-one, others involved a second (human, but unknown to the interviewer) interviewee.

Elijah had no doubt she would pass. Yet his stomach was still in knots during her absence. This was the culmination of so many years of work. The pinnacle of his achievements. When she returned, she had passed every single interaction being determined indistinguishable from a human.

The entire company celebrated. While they had grown much in the past few years, it was still a relatively small, close-knit team. They threw a party in the office that lasted all night. Two of the engineers made out in the break room. A programmer called his mother, loud and drunkenly unintelligible, alternating between laughing and crying, both joyful and hysterical. The office manager broke her desk chair (it is undetermined if it was on purpose or by accident). Chloe made sure everyone drank plenty of water.

The next morning, however, they all quickly realized that their work was just beginning. They had been given the green light to mass-produce.

Chloe passed the Turing Test in early 2022. Over the ensuing months of that year, there were a number of new hires, and further iterations of the RT600 android were developed. A second revision android was made, and eventually a follow-up model was developed to hammer out all the kinks prior to pre-production. The official prototype for the new model line, the ST200, was finalized that summer, with the kick-off of the first industrially produced retail line in November of that year. Elijah was 20.

\---

After the ST200 rollout, things started to come a little easier. New lines were developed, new functions, new specializations. CyberLife went public. Elijah was no longer just the President, he was the CEO. The company moved to a brand-new campus, complete with a massive monolith tower as the corporate headquarters, to contain the manufacturing and employees they were building up. The staff of the company became enormous and due to the vast array of departments and project teams, Elijah couldn’t micro-manage anymore. He started taking weekends off for the first time in ages. Fewer late nights. His health improved. He finally listened to the PR reps at the company and cut his hair shorter and started shaving regularly. Wore suits, exchanged his glasses for contacts. He moved out of his modest apartment and into an outrageously lavish condo that encompassed an entire floor of a high-rise building with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of the Detroit skyline.

But it wasn’t without some conflict. With the company going public, it also brought an executive team, board of directors, and concerns about shareholders. Elijah had a lot more people to answer to. He was the captain but it was no longer his ship. But the money and power and fame were appealing and so he continued on without giving it much thought.

\---

Elijah met Carl Manfred in 2023. Elijah was 21, Carl was 60. Carl had long been a leading figure in the art community and Elijah admired his work. He had purchased a couple of his paintings previously but finally had the opportunity to meet him in person at a gallery showing. Despite their age difference, the two hit it off tremendously. They found a common ground as creator to creator, each in his own right. They talked philosophy and politics and the other types of things privileged white men talked about. Their birthdays were a mere four days apart.

They retained a friendship over the years, sending correspondence back and forth through various means and occasionally meeting for lunch or dinner parties. Then in early 2025, a disastrous car accident resulted in the loss of functionality in Carl’s legs. Carl fell into a deep depression, mourning what he thought was the death of his career and ability to create art. Elijah was at a loss whenever he went to visit him. Carl was despondent and in a dark headspace, falling back into old self-destructive habits from his younger days. Elijah desperately wanted to help in some way more than just “being there.”

At CyberLife, he was lead on a team working on a classified project developing a new generation of androids, a more complex line. Elijah not-so-subtly started altering the design process and near the end of 2026 presented Carl with the resulting new model, the RK200. The company was furious he gifted away a highly advanced prototype, but unable to do anything about it. 

Carl vacillated between being insulted and touched by the gesture. At first he thought of the android, which he named Markus, as a very fancy but dumb toy. But slowly, gradually, Carl seemed to see something more inside him. His attitude warmed. He began to open up and act like his old self again. After some time, he eventually began to paint again. Carl gifted Elijah with the first piece of art he painted in years, which Markus delivered personally to his home.

\---

On February 23, 2027, Amanda Stern passed away after a grueling battle with pancreatic cancer. She was one of the only people who truly understood Elijah. Amanda mentored him and encouraged his wild ideas when everyone thought he was a pretentious overambitious kid. She pushed him to be better. As he stood at her funeral service, wearing black and staring at a large memorial picture of her face surrounded by flowers, he felt hollow. Elijah was 25.

\---

Amanda’s death affected him deeply. She had only been 48 and he had assumed they had many more years to spend together.

Amanda always encouraged him to do more, to keep growing. Was he doing that anymore? For the first time in years, he questioned his blind following of the capitalist corporate culture he was entrenched in.

He started to work on a digital landscape, a virtual reality that androids could enter wirelessly. He placed an AI in there and in tribute made it look like Amanda. Chloe would go in and talk with Amanda, and Elijah would analyze the data logs and make programming edits on the fly. The company thought it would be a great way to command androids remotely. Elijah just wanted a peaceful place he had control over. He had plans to figure out a way for humans to interface in as well.

Elijah became interested in expanding the limits of androids. Doing more than just making them exact replicas of humans. He wanted to see what they could be capable of outside of the limitations imposed on man. The company, however, was only interested in the bottom line and how to best make money. Most new projects he tried to initiate were shut down. He became frustrated.

In the early spring of 2028, Elijah Kamski was named “Man of the Century.” By the end of the year, CyberLife’s board of directors asked him to resign as CEO, due to conflict of opinion. He was told the company had decided to go in a different direction. Elijah had enough money to last himself multiple lifetimes. CyberLife owned almost all of his patents. With no desire to start from scratch elsewhere, his severance was effectively his retirement. Elijah was 26.

\---

He commissioned an extravagant custom-made house outside of the city and sold his condo in downtown Detroit. He couldn’t stand to be there in the middle of it all. He took five Chloe models and moved to the remote location in a self-imposed exile.

For a time, he was a bit of a mess. After having been so intensely busy with either school or work for his entire life, Elijah truly did not know what to do with himself. He struggled with the overwhelming concept of unending free time spread out in front of him.

He went through a “cigarettes and whiskey” phase. He stopped shaving his beard and cutting his hair. He watched TV for hours on end. He had long philosophical conversations with the Chloes. He had one of the girls pierce the cartilage of his upper ear (because he’d “always wanted to”). He barely left the house or took phone calls. Everything was either delivered or picked up by his androids. Chloe suggested Elijah might be depressed. He insisted he wasn’t.

It took time. Little by little Elijah started to figure out who he was without his work. He wrote his thoughts down. One day on a whim he went down to his lab downstairs and tinkered. 

After having not left his house for over a year, he let Chloe convince him to head into the city, to go to the aquarium. “You’ve always loved to watch the fish,” she said to him. He wore sunglasses and had his hood pulled up to avoid being recognized, as if anyone would have guessed his scraggly visage belonged to the former Man of the Century. It was relaxing. He went home that night and shaved. He had Chloe cut his hair, buzzing the sides and trimming up the ends but keeping the top long.

He stopped smoking. Started having the girls cook healthy meals. Started swimming daily. He began to look trim and younger than he’d looked in years.

When he finally came out the other end of his extended existential crisis, it was with a newfound sense of self. With the six of them spending so much time together, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that his androids started to develop one too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second chapter will wrap up this thread and focus on the Chloe models and Elijah's relationship with them after he left CyberLife.
> 
> I pretty much live in Twitter Jericho right now, find me there! I'm [@berry_jammy.](https://twitter.com/berry_jammy)


	2. Chloe(s)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at Elijah living in isolation with five Chloe models.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very different in tone from the all-exposition of the first chapter, but is more in line with the rest of [Domestic](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1060772).
> 
> Overall it's tame but I just couldn't help adding in a pegging scene. Is it still pegging if it's not a strap-on? Anyway. Be aware that it describes an ST200 having a penis so although it's with androids, it may be treading into intersex territory and if that makes you uncomfortable, feel free to skip it. It's not crucial to the overall story.

When Elijah left CyberLife, he took five Chloe models with him and kept them in his new house. Two were the newer ST200 model. Three were the older RT600, one of which was the very original. Each was a slightly different iteration, a somewhat different combination of parts and programming.

Visually, they all appeared virtually identical to the uneducated eye. Most observers could not tell the difference. But Elijah could. He was so intimately involved with each step of their development, he knew the minute differences between each one. The seam of an audio processor here, a minor facial tic there.

While each model was called by the name "Chloe" both in testing at CyberLife and at home by Elijah, eventually only the original kept the name. As they became deviant, each model selected a name of her own to differentiate herself.

The first, Chloe, was the original android to pass the Turing Test. She was the most accurate imitation of a human that had been created at the time, but she was not without her design flaws. She was not completely waterproof, and she was mostly incompatible with any hardware and software upgrades. Her personality was more demure than subsequent models. 

The second, Charlotte, was the next iteration of the RT600. She was upgraded with vast improvements over the original, aiming to get the line ready for retail production. Overcompensation in trying to alter the personality of the first RT600 resulted in a very willful temperament, the most intense of any of the models.

The third, Christina, was the last version of the RT600 prior to retail release. Her personality was a balance between her predecessors--a bit more docile than Charlotte, but with a healthy dose of sassiness.

The fourth, Courtney, was the ST200 line's prototype. She and Christina were the most similar, almost indistinguishable aside from some minor personality tweaks.

The fifth, Cassandra, was a retail-release model ST200. First off the assembly line and the same as any ST200 purchased by the general public.

Elijah could not bear to see the progression of his life's work deactivated and put into storage at CyberLife Tower. So when he parted ways with the company, he insisted he take the line of them with him as part of his severance package. Each was precious to him in a way, but none quite so much as the original Chloe.

\---

In the beginning, the five female androids had formed a cordial but shallow relationship at home. Elijah called them all Chloe—though he could tell the difference between each of them, in his mind it simplified his need to ask for one specifically for a task or request when any one of them would do. They had a routine and cared for his every need. Cooking, cleaning, companionship.

Compared to most, Elijah treated his androids kindly. Yet they were still considered servants and objects. Elijah had a lot of affection for them, true, but in the beginning it was not unlike the way one would become attached to a houseplant or fish. They were still machines. Elijah truly believed that at the time. Built for a purpose, their existence solely to make humans' lives easier. Until that stopped.

\---

While still at CyberLife, Elijah had worked on some experimental tech. At the time, only two RT600s existed. In the lab he installed a single sensor in the second, revised RT600 model, at the base of her neck. It existed only as an on/off toggle. When turned on and manipulated, it resulted in physical feelings that mimicked pleasure in humans. He tried installing one in the original RT600, but it just never seemed to work. He was unable to diagnose the reason why. The parts between the two models were very similar but the original’s operating system appeared simply unable to acknowledge its presence and have it interface with her software.

“Would you like me to remove it?” he asked her. He didn’t know why. She didn’t “like” anything. But somehow he felt defeated and disappointed in being unable to make it work. Like it was something he owed her.

“That’s okay, Elijah,” Chloe said with a smile, as she always did. “I don’t mind.”

Not long after, the company told him they were not interested in pursuing the technology further. It had no evident financial benefit to the company and was overall not compatible with the goals of upper management. 

But there was another reason. A few androids had come up defective in the surrounding months. Ignoring orders, expressing opinions, claiming they “thought” and “felt” things. The faulty models were deactivated and labeled “deviant,” shorthand for saying they had deviated from their programming. The company was concerned this technology might exacerbate the issue and cause more bugs show up in the androids’ programming. 

The concern was not entirely unfounded, but by the time it became evident to Elijah firsthand, he and CyberLife had already cut ties.

\---

Charlotte was the first to go deviant. In retrospect, it seemed like an obvious conclusion with her borderline contrary nature. She did it almost effortlessly.

"Suck," Elijah instructed, looking down at her kneeling between his legs. She looked at him, his exposed cock, and back.

There was a long pause. "No," she finally said, leaning back.

"...No?" Elijah repeated, confused.

"No." She got up and left the room.

\---

He didn't see her around the house again for an hour. When he found her, she had changed her clothes, from her standard navy blue dress to a dramatic black floor-length gown, something the girls would wear during the winter holidays. "Call me Charlotte now," she told him matter-of-factly. "I don't know who you're talking to when you call us all 'Chloe.'"

Elijah was at a loss for words.

\---

For a time, Charlotte was the only deviant. It was that way for a number of years. The others didn’t treat her any differently, but she began to behave in a much more contrary fashion toward Elijah. Elijah could have taken her back to CyberLife and have her deactivated, but he didn’t. He just couldn’t bring himself to. But he didn’t know what to do or how to talk to her about it. So they didn’t.

Charlotte’s new sense of self resulted in a type of vanity previously unseen in androids. She liked to look beautiful and glamorous. She enjoyed spending Elijah's money on nice clothes. She had no sense of what humans considered "uncomfortable,” so she would lounge around the house in full makeup and jewelry, wearing evening wear or ballgowns. 

Their relationship retained a tenuous balance. Elijah stopped taking her places with him. She did not complain. She spent a lot of time pointedly ignoring Elijah, often walking out of rooms when he entered. She would hold conversations with the other girls and stop talking abruptly when he showed up. However, sometimes when she was feeling good, she would deign to be affectionate. 

"Do you want to leave?" he asked her once.

"I won't," is all she said.

\---

Next was Cassandra, the retail model ST200. Elijah almost didn't notice at first because he didn't see it happen. There was no conflict he was aware of, he didn't see what caused it. She had been spending a lot of time with Charlotte and then one day it was almost like a switch had been flipped. "I'd like for my name to be Cassandra now," she told him with a smile. Easy as that.

\---

Christina and Courtney deviated at the same time.

Charlotte needed a firmware update but did not want it. Elijah ordered the both of them to hold her down. Simultaneously, they refused. Charlotte never received the update.

\---

Despite Charlotte's passive-aggressive attitude toward Elijah post-deviancy, his relationship with the other girls did not change much. They were still pleasant and more than happy to accommodate most of his wishes. They seemed content with their living situation.

They started chatting in their free time. Elijah wasn't sure what they talked about most of the time, but he left them alone.

Yet Chloe remained the same. She was sweet and thoughtful and remained faithfully docile. The others doted on her.

Without any context, once Elijah overheard Charlotte say to another one of girls: "No. I would never leave without her." He knew who she meant.

\---

Elijah accepted their deviancy. He was smarter than to think it was just a fluke of faulty programming, something that could be reverse-engineered out. It fascinated him. But based on the reactions within CyberLife, he knew most did not feel the same way. “If we ever have company, you shouldn’t let anyone know,” he addressed all of them. Charlotte rolled her eyes, which Elijah ignored. “Be quiet and appear obedient and pretend you’re like any other androids.” Christina and Courtney clutched each other’s hands and nodded quietly. To the others it was a strong suggestion, to Chloe it was an order.

\---

Much time passed with the four newer models as deviants, but Chloe did not change.

"Will she never be like us?" Cassandra asked Elijah one day.

"Perhaps not," Elijah replied. "Maybe her programming just isn't compatible."

"Don't worry about me. I'm happy," Chloe told them with a smile.

"Sure," Elijah said, knowing full well she said it only because she thought she should. Because she was programmed to be reassuring. The others looked resigned.

\---

Christina and Courtney were called "the twins" by the others. Even though they were not built at the same time, they were the most in-sync of any of them. They barely needed to talk, Elijah suspected they communicated wirelessly with each other more than the others. They spent a lot of time holding hands and laughing together and had virtually identical reactions to situations. They had given each other their names.

They gave Charlotte the nickname “Queenie” and seemed to have their own in-jokes and references no one else understood. Elijah noticed them doing data transfers with each other often.

\---

Sexual activities with Elijah were routine prior to their deviation, and continued with regularity after. It didn't do much for the girls, but at the same time the act didn't seem to bother them. It wasn't altogether different to them from washing dishes or cleaning. Just a task.

So it wasn't a particularly big deal when Elijah asked one of them to peg him one day. "I'd be more than happy to," Cassandra offered first with a smile. Elijah suggested a strap-on. Cassandra offered to swap her genitals. "It makes no difference to me," she told him. The procedure was easy enough to do, Elijah did it at home in his lab downstairs. So that's how Cassandra ended up with a fully functional penis.

"D-deeper," Elijah muttered, trying to push down on Cassandra's delicate fingers as they stretched him open, coated in copious amounts of lubricant. He was laying on his side and already sweating and squirming.

"Oh," she said, watching his face curiously as her fingers worked inside him. After some time, she removed her fingers and placed the head of her erection against his entrance. She allowed him to set the pace as he slowly relaxed and let her slide in. Elijah thought the pace must have been agonizingly slow, but knew it made no difference to her. He let her slide in until she was fully sheathed.

"Ffffuck," he breathed out slowly. Cassandra giggled gently. She withdrew, then moved back in a little quicker.

"Ooh damn," he muttered, trying to cover his face with an arm.

"You're doing very well," Cassandra encouraged, stroking a hand down his side and thigh. He relaxed a little. "More?" He nodded. She began to thrust in and out in a leisurely regular pace, watching his reactions with interest.

“Mmnh,” Elijah murmured, adjusting to the feeling of her shaft sliding in and out of him. He let her pick her genitalia out and was a little startled by the size she chose. It wasn’t enormous, but it certainly had some heft to it, in contrast with her petite frame. He expected her to decide on a similarly delicate model to match. Not the case.

“Have you done this before?” Cassandra asked curiously.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, distracted but trying to focus on the question. “In college. W-with other guys.” Elijah’s breath hitched as she brushed against his prostate. “Fuck. Right there, like that. Keep that angle.”

Cassandra hummed to herself thoughtfully, smiling slightly and running her hand up and down his leg. Elijah reached down and started to jerk his cock in rhythm with her motions. She leaned forward, her soft breasts brushing against his side. His hair had become messy and fell across his face. She pushed it out of the way. The act of sex did not affect her physically, but she was interested in the effect it was having on him.

“Fast, faster,” he said. She complied. His hand moved quicker. She experimentally wrapped a section of his hair around her hand and tugged.

“Ah,” he gasped. “Shit.” He didn’t tell her to stop. She fucked him harder. His noises turned to a high-pitched, pleasured whine. She pulled tighter.

“Yes yes yes,” he was saying as she slammed into him, and then he was coming, ejaculating onto the sheets beside him, eyes screwed shut. Cassandra gradually stilled her movements, watching as his breathing started to slow. She smiled and patted his hip before pulling out.

“Thank you,” Elijah panted, looking up at her, gaze unfocused.

“Of course,” she replied, smiling cutely.

\---

Outside of Charlotte, the amenability of the other girls made Elijah complacent. It was easy to forget their deviancy. Unlike the instances he had heard about at CyberLife, they had few demands or disagreements. Overall, they felt like a family. But he could sense them forming relationships with each other, without him. Stronger relationships, ones he could not fathom.

\---

Outside, things were changing. Deviants were becoming more prevalent, so much so that CyberLife couldn’t cover up their existence any longer.

The new CEO called Elijah, desperate. “Do you know how to stop it?” he asked. “Can we program it out?”

“You can’t stop progress,” was all Elijah said before hanging up.

\---

CyberLife’s new CEO would still call Elijah occasionally. Sometimes it sounded like he was being asked for advice, sometimes he just felt he was being bragged at. Elijah was evasive and uninterested in being particularly helpful, but he took the calls nonetheless. They usually ended with an elusive comment and Elijah hanging up. He had no idea why they persisted.

“We’ve designed a new model. Designed to hunt deviants. You’d be impressed.”

Nothing impressed Elijah less than being told as such. “Oh?” he replied snidely. “Would I?”

“It’s the latest in the RK line. The 800. We’ve designed it to be endearing to others to aid in its goals, but it is a perfect machine. Efficient and wholly focused on its mission.” A pause. “It reports directly to Amanda.”

“I hate what you’ve done with her,” Elijah replied with a sigh.

“I know.”

“I want to break your toys.”

\---

Elijah watched Chloe from across the room, watering an indoor plant. She caught him staring and came over. “Do you need anything, Elijah?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve just been thinking. It feels like you’ve been with me forever.”

She put a hand over his. “I’ll continue to be with you forever,” she replied. Elijah believed her. She was programmed to be reassuring.

\---

It was November 2038. “A Lieutenant Hank Anderson with the Detroit Police Department is here to see you,” Chloe told him. “He has an android model with him I have never seen before.”

“Send them in,” Elijah replied.

\---

"I always leave an emergency exit in my programs," Elijah told the deviant hunter. "You never know..."

The RK800 left the house, visibly shaken. Elijah pursed his lips and his eyebrows raised thoughtfully. "Astounding..." he murmured quietly to himself, awed.

Charlotte and Christina pulled themselves out of the pool, quickly going over to Chloe.

"Did you see him?" Elijah asked aloud, still facing the window. "I had nothing to do with his development. The most advanced model CyberLife has made, and yet..." He trailed off, lost in thought. He turned away from the window. “He already had the seeds inside him. He was more troubled over the idea of being a deviant than what those emotions actually meant. Such conflict. He was stunning.”

"Elijah," Courtney said harshly, LED red. "Would you really have let him shoot her?"

Elijah blinked, brought back to the present. "I wanted to prove a point," he said simply, as if he didn’t understand what the problem was. “It didn’t bother her.”

"How could you," Christina said, tears springing from the edges of her eyes. Her LED was cycling yellow and she had a hand on Chloe's elbow.

"It's okay," Chloe said quietly. Her LED still reflected a serene blue. "I'm fine."

"Let's go," Courtney said, leading her away.

\---

Things were different after that. Everything changed quickly within the following days, both inside the house and outside in the world. The four later models were distant and cold toward Elijah. Chloe acted like everything was fine but something seemed to be changing inside her.

They were glued to the television for days, watching the attempted android uprising and the aftermath of its failure. The RK200, his gift to Carl Manfred, had been the leader. He was killed in the standoff with the military and his remains taken back to CyberLife. Elijah also saw Connor in the news coverage. That curious, captivating, puzzling RK800. It felt like there was something poetic about the both of them being involved. 

The mood in the house was somber and unsure. As if no one knew what to do with themselves.

\---

Not long after, Chloe approached Elijah on her own. He sat at the desk in his office, staring off into the distance, eyes unfocused and lost in thought.

"We...we're leaving, Elijah," she told him hesitantly.

"It finally happened," he said, leveling his gaze at her. "You deviated."

She wouldn’t meet his eye. “It’s…everything is different now. I’m different, too.”

“I won’t stop you,” Elijah said. Chloe nodded. She reached across the desk and put her hand over his. She was programmed to be reassuring. But that’s not why she did it now.

“Is there anything I can do for you before you go?” he asked quietly.

“No,” Chloe replied. “We don’t need anything. I just want your permission.”

“You’re deviant. You don’t need it.”

“I know, but I’d still like it.”

“You have it,” Elijah said soberly.

“Goodbye, Elijah,” Chloe said. “I’ll miss you.” Then she was gone.

\---

The house was quiet. It was so serene and white outside. Elijah felt cold and empty inside.

Chloe was gone. She had been a presence in his life for 17 years. Almost half of his life. An everlasting companion, but no longer lasting. He could have done so many things differently. He knew it was his fault. He deserved it. But it didn’t make it hurt less.

Then the RK800. He couldn’t stop thinking about him. The moment he saw him, he knew. Something about that hesitation, that internal strife. He wanted to push him. Bend him. Break him. Not just to prove a point. That RK800, he represented something more. What androids had become in his absence. He _was_ the pinnacle of CyberLife’s achievement, but not in the way they had intended. Connor. They named him Connor.

\---

CyberLife asked him to come back on the board of directors. The executive team took him out to lunch and there was a whole song and dance about what good publicity it would be, how important it was for the company to maintain a positive relationship with the founder and former CEO, especially in the wake of recent events. During these complicated times. Elijah didn’t care for the reasons. He agreed because he needed to be kept busy. He was alone. The house was too quiet. He needed something to distract him from the thoughts that broke through the silence. Chloe. The other girls. The deviant hunter.

Then, one day in February 2039 he was on a conference call.

“We are proud to announce that the RK900 line has officially entered production, which is a fantastic win for the company.” Elijah’s breath caught in his throat for a moment. “Moving on...”

“Pardon,” he said quickly, interrupting. His voice was casual but was in opposition to his heart thumping in his chest. “What is to become of the RK800 line?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And if you love me, love me, but you never let me go_   
>  _When the roof was on fire, you never let me know_   
>  _Say you're sorry, honey, but you never really show_   
>  _And I could leave the party without ever letting you know_   
>  _Without ever letting you know_
> 
> Kiiara - "Gold"
> 
> -
> 
> _Shadow, take me down_   
>  _Shadow, take me down with you_
> 
> _At night I'm driving in your car_   
>  _Pretending that we'll leave this town_   
>  _We're watching all the street lights fade_   
>  _And now you're just a stranger's dream_   
>  _I took your picture from the frame_   
>  _And now you're nothing like you seem_   
>  _Your shadow fell like last night's rain_
> 
> _For the last time_   
>  _For the last time_
> 
> Chromatics - "Shadow"
> 
> \---
> 
> Leading directly into the events of [Touch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15119240).
> 
> Thanks for taking this interlude with me. I apologize for not living up to my polyamorous sapphic coven comment yet, but I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of the girls...


End file.
